Obamacare has been promoted as a benefit to lower-income workers who can’t currently afford health insurance, but in fact President Barack Obama’s healthcare reform will price many unskilled workers out of full-time employment.

A new report from the Heritage Foundation shows that after an employer pays a worker’s new healthcare premiums, along with the minimum wage, payroll taxes, and unemployment insurance taxes as required, the full-time worker will cost the employer at least $10.03 per hour, or $20,063 a year.

A full-time worker with a family health plan will cost an average of $13.75 an hour, or $27,501 a year.

“Employers who hire workers with productivity below these rates will lose money,” according to the report written by James Sherk, a senior policy analyst in labor economics in the Center for Data Analysis at The Heritage Foundation.

Many of these employers will respond to the higher costs by dumping workers onto the government healthcare exchanges. This will cost the employer a $2,000 penalty for each full-time worker, far less than the cost of health premiums but still a $1 per hour increase in full-time employment costs.

The employer mandate in the healthcare bill will also encourage employers to replace full-time workers with part-time employees, since Obamacare does not penalize employers for not providing health benefits to these workers.

“Obamacare hurts less skilled workers,” Sherk observes.

“It raises the minimum productivity required for them to hold a full-time job, particularly workers with families. Workers who cannot produce at least $20,000 per year (single plan) or $27,500 per year (family plan) of value to employers will have serious difficulty finding full-time jobs. Many of these workers will have to either live off reduced income from part-time hours or juggle the schedules of multiple part-time jobs.”

The cost to employers will actually be higher in a number of states that have a minimum wage greater than the federal rate. State unemployment insurance taxes and healthcare costs also vary.

The most expensive state for employing workers is Connecticut, where full-time employees with family plans cost employers $15.27 per hour, or at least $30,550 a year.

Oklahoma has the lowest employment costs, $11.92 an hour for workers with families.

Sherk concludes: “The weak economy has made it difficult for unskilled individuals to find work. Obamacare will make it even more difficult for them to obtain full-time jobs.”